The growing problem of microplastics – tiny particles of polymer-type materials from modern industry – has been thought for several years to be a peril for fish, but the study published on Thursday is the first to prove the damage in trials.
Microplastics are near-indestructible in natural environments.
They enter the oceans through litter, when waste such as plastic bags, packaging and other convenience materials are discarded.
Vast amounts of these end up in the sea, through inadequate waste disposal systems and sewage outfall.

Another growing source is microbeads, tiny particles of hard plastics that are used in cosmetics, for instance as an abrasive in modern skin cleaners.
These easily enter waterways as they are washed off as they are used, flushed down drains and forgotten, but can last for decades in our oceans.

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that fish exposed to such materials during their development show stunted growth and increased mortality rates, as well as changed behaviour that could endanger their survival.

Samples of perch, still in their larval state, were shown not only to take in the plastics, but to prefer them to their real food.
Larval perch with access to microplastic particles ate only the plastics, ignoring their natural food source of plankton.

The study, published in Science on Thursday, found that the fish born into an environment rich in microplastics – defined as tiny pieces of less than 5mm in size – had reduced rates of hatching and development to maturity.

The perch studied also ignored the chemical signals that would normally warn them of the presence of predators, the researchers found.
These particles are now found in abundance across the world’s oceans, and are often common in shallow coastal areas, where they wash in from waste dumps and sewerage systems
“This is the first time an animal has been found to preferentially feed on plastic particles, and is cause for concern,” said Peter Eklöv, co-author of the study.
“Larvae exposed to microplastic particles during development also displayed changed behaviours and were much less active than fish that had been reared in water that contained no microplastic particles.”

However, the study suggests that damage has already been done, and preventing the leakage of more microplastics into the oceans should be a matter of urgency, as once they are in our seas they are almost impossible to get rid of.

Perch exposed to microplastics in the study were eaten by pike four times more quickly than their naturally-reared relatives, when the predators were introduced into their environment.
All of the plastic-exposed fish in the study were dead within 48 hours.

Microplastics visible in a pike.Photograph: Oona Lönnstedt/Science

This suggests that the impacts of microplastics are likely to be far-reaching and long-lasting, beyond the immediate effects on the fish’s digestive systems, which was previously the main cause of concern.
Plastics may be causing differing behaviour in the fish, and inhibiting their evolved responses to danger, through mechanisms not yet fully understood.

The study adds to research that has found coastal fish species suffering marked declines in recent years, while the amount of plastic litter in the oceans has increased.
“If early life-history stages of other species are similarly affected by microplastics, and this translates to increased mortality rates, the effects on aquatic ecosystems could be profound,” warned Oona Lönnstedt, another of the report’s authors.

The iconic Suez Canal now has a twin
channel, likely leading to a vast increase in shipping between Port Said
and Suez.

However, there are dire warnings about the impact this
project has had on marine wildlife in the Mediterranean.

The construction of the Suez Canal in the 19th century was an affair
marred by accusations of slave labour and geopolitical jostling between
Britain and France, resulting in a decade of controversy and financial
horse-trading.
Nevertheless, when the 193km canal eventually opened in
1869 it had an immediate and dramatic impact on global trade, allowing
ships a vastly quicker route between Europe and Asia, even if the first
journeys took upwards of 40 hours to travel the length of the canal.

New images have now emerged revealing the most recent canal
expansion, which was completed in August 2015, and officially opened by
the the Suez Canal Authority
in February 2016.
The expansion itself has seen the widening and
deepening of the existing canal, as well as the construction of a new
35km channel running parallel to the original.
Understandably, the
revolution of trade infrastructure over the past century-and-a-half –
principally through the take-off in aviation travel – has diminished the
importance of the Suez Canal.

Nevertheless, this expansion will likely
have a significant impact on daily traffic through the canal,
anticipated to grow from 49 ships at present, to 97 by 2023.
Additionally, waiting times are expected to drop to three hours instead
of between eight and 11 hours at present, and transit times through the
canal would become 11 hours instead of 18 hours. Interestingly, unlike
many canals across the world, neither the original nor the new Suez
Canals contain any locks, since the water levels in the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea are are similar enough that ships can sail straight
through.

NASA satellite images from April 2014 (L) and April 2016 (R) show the scale of the new Suez construction

However, prior to the opening of the new canal, there were concerns
expressed by many in the scientific community about the lack of a
rigorous study into the environmental impacts which the canal expansion
might have, particularly in terms of the spread of invasive species.
‘It’s not a possibility, it happens,’ says Dr Elizabeth Cook, Head of
the Scottish Association for Marine Science and a senior lecturer in
Marine Biology.
‘It’s unbelievable how the eastern side of the
Mediterranean is changing. Some of the species are now migrating,
particularly the fish species, and some of them are noxious and cause
fatalities. Compared to Northern Europe, there’s no comparison in the
changes that are going on for invasives.’

Cook is one of several international scientists who have penned
articles in recent years, warning of the dramatic impacts which the Suez
expansion will have on the ecology of the marine environments of the
Mediterranean.
Writing in the journal Biological Invasionslast year,
they reveal that, ‘of nearly 700 multicellular non-indigenous species
currently recognised from the Mediterranean Sea, fully half were
introduced through the Suez Canal since 1869.’
The worry is that the new
channel will significantly increase this trend. In a separate article last year for the journal The Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin,
they implored the Egyptian government to publish an ‘Environmental
Impact Assessment’ for the Suez expansion, which they stated was, ‘one
opportunity to prevent, or minimise, a potential great ecological
setback to the biodiversity and the ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea
that should not be missed.’

The number of non-indigenous species in some Mediterranean countries.

In red, the fraction of species likely introduced through the Suez Canal

(Image: Galil et al.)

‘It’s a well-known fact for a number years that invasive species have
been able to get through into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal,
and they are completely changing the ecology of the eastern part,’
emphasises Cook.
She highlights one species, the highly poisonous
jellyfish Rhopilema nomadica, swarms of which have caused
numerous problems across the Mediterranean since first passing through
the canal in the 1980s.
‘Certain species are even starting to get to the
western side,’ she warns.

The waters surrounding Antarctica may be one of the last places to experience human-driven climate change.
New research from the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that ocean currents explain why the seawater has stayed at roughly the same temperature while most of the rest of the planet has warmed.

The study resolves a scientific conundrum, and an inconsistent pattern of warming often seized on by climate deniers. Observations and climate models show that the unique currents around Antarctica continually pull deep, centuries-old water up to the surface - seawater that last touched Earth's atmosphere before the machine age, and has never experienced fossil fuel-related climate change. The paper is published May 30 in Nature Geoscience.

"With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on," said lead author Kyle Armour, a UW assistant professor of oceanography and of atmospheric sciences.
"We show that it's for really simple reasons, and ocean currents are the hero here."

courtesy of NASA/GSFC

Gale-force westerly winds that constantly whip around Antarctica act to push surface water north, continually drawing up water from below.
The Southern Ocean's water comes from such great depths, and from sources that are so distant, that it will take centuries before the water reaching the surface has experienced modern global warming.

Other places in the oceans, like the west coast of the Americas and the equator, draw seawater up from a few hundred meters depth, but that doesn't have the same effect. "The Southern Ocean is unique because it's bringing water up from several thousand meters [as much as 2 miles]," Armour said.
"It's really deep, old water that's coming up to the surface, all around the continent. You have a lot of water coming to the surface, and that water hasn't seen the atmosphere for hundreds of years."

The water surfacing off Antarctica last saw Earth's atmosphere centuries ago in the North Atlantic, then sank and followed circuitous paths through the world's oceans before resurfacing off Antarctica, hundreds or even a thousand years later.

Delayed warming of the Antarctic Ocean is commonly seen in global climate models.
But the culprit had been wrongly identified as churning, frigid seas mixing extra heat downward.
The study used data from Argo observational floats and other instruments to trace the path of the missing heat. "The old idea was that heat taken up at the surface would just mix downward, and that's the reason for the slow warming," Armour said.
"But the observations show that heat is actually being carried away from Antarctica, northward along the surface."

In the Atlantic, the northward flow of the ocean's surface continues all the way to the Arctic.
The study used dyes in model simulations to show that seawater that has experienced the most climate change tends to clump up around the North Pole.
This is another reason why the Arctic's ocean and sea ice are bearing the brunt of global warming, while Antarctica is largely oblivious. "The oceans are acting to enhance warming in the Arctic while damping warming around Antarctica," Armour said.
"You can't directly compare warming at the poles, because it's occurring on top of very different ocean circulations."

Knowing where the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes, and identifying why the poles are warming at different rates, will help to better predict temperatures in the future. "When we hear the term 'global warming,' we think of warming everywhere at the same rate," Armour said.
"We are moving away from this idea of global warming and more toward the idea of regional patterns of warming, which are strongly shaped by ocean currents."

Satellites used to be the exclusive playthings of rich governments
and wealthy corporations.
But increasingly, as space becomes more
democratized, these sophisticated technologies are coming within reach
of ordinary people.
Just like drones before them, miniature satellites
are beginning to fundamentally transform our conceptions of who gets to
do what up above our heads.
As a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences
highlights, these satellites hold tremendous potential for making
satellite-based science more accessible than ever before.
However, as
the cost of getting your own satellite in orbit plummets, the risks of
irresponsible use grow.
The question here is no longer “Can we?” but “Should we?”
What are
the potential downsides of having a slice of space densely populated by
equipment built by people not traditionally labeled as “professionals”?
And what would the responsible and beneficial development and use of
this technology actually look like?
Some of the answers may come from a nonprofit organization that has
been building and launching amateur satellites for nearly 50 years.

Just a few inches across and ready for orbit.

The technology we’re talking about

Having your own personal satellite launched into orbit might sound
like an idea straight out of science fiction.
But over the past few
decades a unique class of satellites has been created that fits the
bill: CubeSats.

The “Cube” here simply refers to the satellite’s shape.
The most common CubeSat (the so-called “1U” satellite)
is a 10 cm (roughly 4 inches) cube, so small that a single CubeSat
could easily be mistaken for a paperweight on your desk.
These mini,
modular satellites can fit in a launch vehicle’s formerly “wasted
space.”
Multiples can be deployed in combination for more complex
missions than could be achieved by one CubeSat alone.
Within their compact bodies these minute satellites are able to house
sensors and communications receivers/transmitters that enable operators
to study the Earth from space, as well as space around the Earth.
They’re primarily designed for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – an easily accessible region of space from around 200 to 800 miles above the Earth, where human-tended missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station (ISS) hang out.
But they can attain more distant orbits; NASA plans for most of its future Earth-escaping payloads (to the moon and Mars especially) to carry CubeSats.

Tiny satellites the size of a small cube, jam-packed with the most advanced nanotechnologies: is this the future of Space missions?

Because they’re so small and light, it costs much less to get a
CubeSat into Earth orbit than a traditional communication or GPS
satellite.
For instance, a research group here at Arizona State
University recently claimed their developmental “femtosats” (especially
small CubeSats) could cost as little as US$3,000 to put in orbit.
This decrease in cost is allowing researchers, hobbyists and even elementary school groups to put simple instruments into LEO, by piggybacking onto rocket launches, or even having them deployed from the ISS.
The first CubeSat was created in the early 2000s, as a way of enabling CalPoly and Stanford graduate students to design, build, test and operate a spacecraft with similar capabilities to the USSR’s Sputnik.
Since then, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office
and even Boeing have all launched and operated CubeSats. There are more
than 130 currently operational in orbit.
The NASA Educational Launch of
Nano Satellite (ELaNa)
program, which offers free launches for educational groups and science
missions, is now open to U.S. nonprofit corporations as well.
Clearly, satellites are not just for rocket scientists anymore.

The National Academy of Sciences report emphasizes CubeSats'
importance in scientific discovery and the training of future space
scientists and engineers.Yet it also acknowledges that widespread
deployment of LEO CubeSats isn’t risk-free.

The greatest concern the authors raise is space debris – pieces of
“junk” that orbit the earth, with the potential to cause serious damage
if they collide with operational units, including the ISS.
Currently, there aren’t many CubeSats and they’re tracked closely.
Yet as LEO opens up to more amateur satellites, they may pose an increasing threat. As the report authors point out,
even near-misses might lead to the “creation of an onerous regulatory
framework and affect the future disposition of science CubeSats.”

Honey, I shrunk the satellites! Mini-satellites are following in the footsteps of cell phones and computers.

CubeSats are small but highly capable of performing a variety of space missions.

More broadly, the report authors focus on factors that might impede
greater use of CubeSat technologies.
These include regulations around
earth-space radio communications, possible impacts of International
Traffic in Arms Regulations (which govern import and export of
defense-related articles and services in the U.S.), and potential issues
around extra-terrestrial contamination.
But what about the rest of us?
How can we be sure that hobbyists and
others aren’t launching their own “spy” satellites, or (intentionally or
not) placing polluting technologies into LEO, or even deploying
low-cost CubeSat networks that could be hijacked and used nefariously?
As CubeSat researchers are quick to point out, these are far-fetched
scenarios.
But they suggest that now’s the time to ponder unexpected and
unintended possible consequences of more people than ever having access
to their own small slice of space.
In an era when you can simply buy a CubeSat kit off the shelf, how can we trust the satellites over our heads were developed with good intentions by people who knew what they were doing?
Some “expert amateurs” in the satellite game could provide some inspiration for how to proceed responsibly.

Guidance from some experienced amateurs
In 1969, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT)
was created in order to foster ham radio enthusiasts' participation in
space research and communication.
It continued the efforts, begun in
1961, by Project OSCAR – a U.S.-based group that built and launched the very first nongovernmental satellite just four years after Sputnik.

As an organization of volunteers, AMSAT was putting “amateur”
satellites in orbit decades before the current CubeSat craze.
And over
time, its members have learned a thing or two about responsibility.
Here, open-source development has been a central principle.
Within
the organization, AMSAT has a philosophy of open sourcing everything –
making technical data on all aspects of their satellites fully available
to everyone in the organization, and when possible, the public.
According to a member of the team responsible for FOX 1-A, AMSAT’s first CubeSat:

This means that it would be incredibly difficult to sneak
something by us … there’s no way to smuggle explosives or an energy
emitter into an amateur satellite when everyone has access to the
designs and implementation.

However, they’re more cautious about sharing info with nonmembers, as
the organization guards against others developing the ability to hijack
and take control of their satellites.
This form of “self-governance” is possible within long-standing
amateur organizations that, over time, are able to build a sense of
responsibility to community members, as well as society more generally.

But what happens when new players emerge, who don’t have deep roots within the existing culture?
Hobbyist and student “new kids on the block” are gaining access to
technologies without being part of a longstanding amateur establishment.
They are still constrained by funders, launch providers and a tapestry
of regulations – all of which rein in what CubeSat developers can and
cannot do.
But there is a danger they’re ill-equipped to think through
potential unintended consequences.

What these unintended consequences might be is admittedly far from
clear.
Certainly, CubeSat developers would argue it’s hard to imagine
these tiny satellites causing substantial physical harm.
Yet we know
innovators can be remarkably creative with taking technologies in
unexpected directions.
Think of something as seemingly benign as the
cellphone – we have microfinance and text-based social networking at one
end of the spectrum, improvised explosive devices at the other.
This is where a culture of social responsibility around CubeSats
becomes important – not simply for ensuring that physical risks are
minimized (and good practices are adhered to), but also to engage with a much larger community in anticipating and managing less obvious consequences of the technology.

This is not an easy task.
Yet the evidence from AMSAT and other areas
of technology development suggest that responsible amateur communities
can and do emerge around novel technologies.
For instance, see the diy-bio community, where hobbyists work in advanced community biotech labs. Their growing community commitment
to safety and responsibility is highlighting how amateurs can embrace
responsibility in research and innovation.
A similar commitment is seen
within open-source software and hardware communities, such as the members of the Linux Foundation.
The challenge here, of course, is ensuring that what an amateur
community considers to be responsible, actually is.
Here’s where there
needs to be a much wider public conversation that extends beyond
government agencies and scientific communities to include students,
hobbyists, and anyone who may potentially stand to be affected by the
use of CubeSat technology.

Dubbed MAREA—Spanish for “tide”—this giant underwater cable will stretch from Virginia to Bilbao, Spain, shuttling digital data across 6,600 kilometers of ocean.
Providing up to 160 terabits per second of bandwidth—about 16 million times the bandwidth of your home Internet connection—it will allow the two tech titans to more efficiently move enormous amounts of information between the many computer data centers and network hubs that underpin their popular online services.

“If you look at the cable systems across the Atlantic, a majority land in the Northeast somewhere,” says Najam Ahmad, Facebook’s vice president of network engineering.
“This gives us so many more options.”

The project expands the increasingly enormous computer networks now being built by the giants of the Internet as they assume a role traditionally played by telecom companies.
Google has invested in two undersea cables that stretch from the West Coast of the United States to Japan, another that connects the US and Brazil, and a network of cables that connect various parts of Asia.
Rather than just leasing bandwidth on undersea cables and terrestrial connections operated by telecoms, the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are building their own networking infrastructure both on land and across the seas.

The fact that these Internet giants are laying their own cables—at their own expense—shows just how much data these giants must move.
Consider the services they run: Google offers its eponymous search engine, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, and so many more.
Microsoft offers Bing, Office365, and its Azure cloud services.
Facebook has its social network along with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
The data moved by just a few online giants now dwarfs that of most others, so much so that, according to telecommunications research firm Telegeography, more than two thirds of the digital data moving across the Atlantic is traveling on private networks—namely networks operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
That’s up from 10 percent just a few years ago.
“It’s a tremendous change,” says Telegeography analyst Tim Stronge.

Facebook, Microsoft and Telefónica have joined forces to lay fiber-optic cable across the Atlantic Ocean, the tech companies’ latest big-budget infrastructure project.

Above, rope is coiled in the foreground as a work crew in France installs a separate submarine cable in March.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

With so much data flowing across their systems, these companies are scrambling to build new infrastructure.
In addition to building its own undersea cable, Facebook is buying up what’s called “dark fiber”—unused terrestrial cables—so that it can control how its data moves from place to place and move it more efficiently.
According to Ahmad, Facebook is now using dark fiber “pretty much everywhere” as the company expands its network into new regions.
And the same likely goes for Google and Microsoft.

“We’re starting to see more of the large Internet content providers looking to build more of their own networks—whether they are leasing dark fiber or laying down new cables to build new routes,” says Michael Murphy, president and CEO of telecom consultancy NEF.
“It makes sense.”

In the past, Facebook has joined consortia that operate other undersea cables—groups typically made up of telecom companies—but this project is different.
Rather than letting a group build and control the cable—that is, rather than sharing lines with others—the company is laying its own dedicated lines and it has the power to use them however it sees fit.
In the end, this allows Facebook to expand its online empire much quicker than in the past.
“The consortium model is much slower than what we would like,” Ahmad says.

Much the same applies to Microsoft.
That said, the two Internet giants aren’t abandoning the telecom industry altogether.
The pair have brought in another partner: Telxius, a subsidiary of Spanish telecom Telefónica.
Telxius will operate the cable, and Facebook and Microsoft services will command most of its bandwidth.
But Telxius will sell some capacity to other companies in need of trans-Atlantic connections.

The location of the cable also suits the specific needs of Facebook and Microsoft.
Myriad undersea cables connect North America with Europe, but they don’t typically originate in Virginia.
Even though Northern Virginia has long served as a major hub for Internet data centers, including facilities used by Facebook as well as dedicated data centers built by Microsoft and Amazon, the data itself typically flows through cables anchored in the New York area.
With MAREA, Facebook will be able to more efficiently move information not only from facilities in Virginia but from its Facebook-owned and -operated data center in Rutherford County, North Carolina.

“To have a direct connection from Virginia lowers latency,” says Murphy—that is, the time it takes for data to flow from data centers to its ultimate destination.
“And that probably provides better quality service.” Other companies are planning cables anchored in this same area, but MAREA will likely be the first.
Construction is set to begin in August and completion is expected in October 2017.

Connecting Its Own Way

In connecting to Bilbao in Spain, Ahmad says, the cable will provide a more efficient path not only to Europe but to Africa, the Middle East, and even Asia.
All three geographies are increasingly important to Facebook and other Internet giants as they seek new audiences and new sources of revenue.
Spanning more than 1.5 billion people, the Facebook social network has saturated the US and European markets, so now the company must focus on new frontiers.
And in many respects, that involves building new infrastructure.
The project expands the increasingly enormous computer networks being built by the giants of the Internet.

Facebook is also working to fashion all sorts of new hardware that more rapidly pushes the Internet into those parts of the world that don’t already have it, from solar-powered high-altitude drones to a new breed of wireless antenna.
Rather than relying solely on the world’s telecoms and telecom hardware makers, the company is fashioning its own hardware.
And in the hopes of pushing this gear into the market, it intends to open source the designs, freely sharing them with the rest of the world.

A similar dynamic is at play with the new undersea cable.
Rather than just use what the telecoms provide, the company is building on its own.
And a key aspect of the project is that it’s free to use whatever equipment it pleases to plug into the cable.
This isn’t necessarily the case with the consortium model.
“You’re stuck with whatever system was built initially.
And if there has to be an upgrade, all the partners in the consortium have to agree to that upgrade,” Ahmad says.
“[The MAREA Project] gives us more control of our own destiny.”
The Real Telecoms

In some ways, this eats into a market once controlled by the big telecoms.
“It’s going to get interesting.
Who is the real telecommunications provider?” Murphy says.
“It’s going to take some of their business away.”

But it should also be said that the Facebooks and the Googles and the Microsofts aren’t taking existing business from the telecoms.
They’re just taking potential business.
“This does mean that telecoms are carrying somewhat less of the content provider traffic than they would in the past,” says Telegeography’s Stronge.
“But a lot of this capacity wasn’t even around a few years ago.”

When you consider that these Internet giants are also using their own dark fiber on land, the upshot is that they are, more and more, taking control of their own destiny.
As Murphy points out, if they aren’t beholden to the telecoms, they aren’t beholden either to the whims and the prices of the telecoms or to any disputes over net neutrality (the notion that no company should receive preferential treatment on shared Internet lines.)

With its Fiber division, Google has even gone so far as to become an Internet service provider itself, laying down faster lines all the way to American homes.
That means it can potentially control the length and breadth of the network, from you to its many data centers in many parts of the world, and back again.
Google doesn’t quite control the entire path from its own data centers to everyone’s front doors.
But that’s the direction it’s headed.
And, well, so are Facebook and Microsoft.